Hilary's Desk

On Monday, Jamie Morton, who calls himself a science reporter, penned an article called, “Your winter flu will count this year”.  Jamie Morton’s twitter account, described himself as a, “Scribbler at NZ Herald. Enjoys irrelevant music and coffeehousing. Dislikes Nazis and any concept of a NZ celebrity culture. Views are his own.” Quite what qualifies him as being “scientific” is inscrutable, but at least he doesn’t describe himself, as an “investigative science journalist”, for if he had, I would have choked.  Continue Reading

There are days when you wonder where supposed experts leave their brains. Worse, you wonder about the people who follow like lemmings. Dr Arthur Caplan has scored another hit in the brainless bullseye for his recent medieval thinking blog. I will intersperse comments amongst his mental witterings:

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It would seem that tentative toes have entered medical debate over flu vaccines. Ever so tentative.  Almost apologetic actually, which is bizarre, if you look closely at 60 years of very clear medical evidence that the flu vaccine has always performed exceptionally poorly.  But there is another issue here, and it's the "myth" which the medical profession tries to dispel - which everyone knows, which is, "Get the flu vaccine and get sick.

That comment is like a stuck record, which comes out of the lips of so many people. Yet, the doctor always says, "Oh, it's coincidental!" and never bothers to do a throat swab to back that presumption up with fact. Continue Reading

Last night TVNZ did a phone interview with me on the hot topic from the New South Wales legislature which has introduced legislation to ban unvaccinated children from child-care facilities. The Australian opposition leader Mr John Robertson wrote an opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph yesterday (pdf), which epitomises the lack of thinking behind this legislation. He said: Continue Reading

The year 1997 in Australia is etched in my mind, because 17 years ago, the then Minister of Health, Dr Michael Wooldridge, started a fraudulent media campaign stating that Australia's childhood vaccination rates were 53%.  This figure was not only splattered over the Australian Media... it made it into the New Zealand Herald. It didn't matter to him, or the media, that the data he provided was a total lie.  It never occurred to him that he'd even got any facts wrong, like men becoming sterile after MEASLES..... The medical profession knew his vaccination rate data was lies, and stayed silent, sitting back poker-faced with folded arms, quietly cheering him on in one of the most blatant, criminally erroneous publicity campaigns that had ever taken place.   Until now.... Continue Reading